hard boiled eggs and wet jeans with ashes

Whenever I eat hard-boiled eggs, which I often do, I end up nearly choking to death. Why? I use them as a fill-in food. At the moment, my top, fill-in foods are hard-boiled eggs, nuts (peanuts or tamari roasted almonds), Kathie's Kitchen seasoned pumpkin seeds, and mozzarella cheese sticks. My diet is made up primarily of fill-in foods because I tend not to eat meals. I eat too much and get too full when I eat meals. And today I am 42. Who wants to be fat and forty-two?

So these near-Heimlich-maneuver episodes are probably because I eat the eggs too fast, because I'm starving by the time I go get one. I just did it again about half an hour ago. It's like an eating disorder. I was in pain and mildly freaking out. I followed it with a cheese stick, which made matters worse, and I almost stood up and just impaled myself on the back of my office chair.

Change gears. I promised someone I would write about the ash scattering. It was a cloudy, almost stormy day. It did rain on our way back in on the boat. My son was astonishingly cuddly and devoted to me the whole trip. He'll never say anything to let you know, but he's got a pretty sensitive radar. He knew exactly what was going on inside of me.

I feel bad about one thing. I didn't hug my mom when she was sitting by herself crying. I was talking, laughing, holding it together with my relatives. I did get up and sit next to her after a while, but that was all I could do.

So we got to this special spot, named by his brothers, "Roy's rock." It's a rock formation that's deep down at the bottom of the Sound and apparently their dad, who I called Pop-pop, discovered it long ago as a great fishing spot. I went down below and got the special scattering urn, untied the twisty tie that cinched the plastic bag inside and, with my mom and my son holding my jacket from the back (choking me a little actually), so I wouldn't fall in, I leaned off the swim deck at the back of the boat and poured out the ashes of my dad's body. Roy's body. Everyone else threw in a single flower. That was a nice touch. Thanks, PBH. And so, as life goes, it wasn't exactly a movie-perfect scene.

The ashes kept getting caught in the wind and blowing back all over me, the waves were pretty high, and ended up crashing over my legs, soaking my jeans, and it took me a long time to get it all poured out and I finally, very unromantically, had to jerk and jiggle and eventually just pull out the damn plastic bag and shake it till it was empty.

I was crying the whole time, so my face was all wet, my jeans were all wet, my jacket was up around my neck from my son and mother's attempts to keep me from going overboard, and it was cold. When I was done, I closed up the pretty urn, and I hugged my mom, my aunt and uncle, cousin, other uncle, my son, and the friend who was captaining the boat. Most of us were crying.

Then we headed back in. My son had a birthday party, I had a wine dinner to get to, and life just kept on. I'm still breathing.

Today is my birthday and I miss him like crazy right now. It's so true, what people say and what you hear in song lyrics. I'd give anything to have him back just tonight, just to have him sitting next to me at my birthday dinner. Not him sick and in pain, but him smiling and laughing and healthy -- his nose sunburned from a day on his boat.

Breathe.